3. My First Labor: To Kill the Nemean Lion

BEFORE THE day of the gods’ offer was over, I was in Tiryns, a port city near Mycenae, on that southern peninsula of mainland Greece, the Peloponnese. I went to Eurystheus’ palace to await his orders.

Remember that he was my cousin, whose birth had preceded my own, thus giving him the Tirynian throne Zeus had meant for me. Hera’s deviousness had taken the throne away from me, and just before I announced my presence to Eurystheus, she descended to earth to goad him on: “Do not be taken in by Hercules’ boldness or beauty or his seeming frankness. He is a sly one!” she told him. She appeared to him in the guise of Tervalonios, a white-bearded sage. “Zeus’s son means to steal your throne,” she said. “For the next dozen years you have him at your command to perform ten duties. He is a lion-killer, so do not let him survive or he shall surely murder you.”

Even Eurystheus recognized a god when he saw one, and he tremblingly told the goddess in disguise, “Whoever you are, whatever you say, I understand and will comply. I shall rid myself and the world of my cousin in short order.”

I entered the throne room just as Tervalonios turned into a sparrow and flew off into the heavens. This was not a good sign for me. Eurystheus looked at me with fear and hate, but was silent. He scratched his chin, and for several minutes sat wrapped in a cloak of thought. Finally he spoke: “You agree to serve me, to perform ten tasks, whatever they may be, and just as I say?”

“Yes.”

He got up and walked toward me, surveying me up and down, walking around me, and snorting with mockery. “I have heard you were lucky enough to kill a lion,” he remarked.

The fool! Never could he have killed a mouse without fainting. All his power lay in his position, while all mine lay in my wits and strength.

“Let us say, cousin,” he went on, “that your first task will suit your lionish tastes. Go kill the lion of Nemea.”

Nemea was many miles off. I was armed with bow and arrows, a knife and a spear. Yet I feared nothing and believed, rather, that this Nemean lion would flee at seeing me.

When I arrived in Nemea, however, I learned this was no ordinary lion I was to challenge. He was the freakish offspring of the monsters Echidna and Typhon. I was told the lion was lying at rest in its cave after days of marauding. No fence had ever held it back, so splendid a leaper was he. He had made Nemea a barren land—the number of livestock had dwindled to nearly nothing. The lion would sniff out his prey and attack, no matter how many men were there to protect the sheep or goats or cattle or pheasants. He killed the animals and killed the men who tended them. They had shot arrows at him, thrown spears at him, but he never turned away.

Finding my way to his cave on his hillside, I called out, “Lion, beast of destruction, you have met your match.”

I clanged the edge of my spearhead against the boulder beside the entry. The iron rang and for the next several moments I expected the lion’s charge. Lucky for me he was lazily enjoying the food in his stomach and refused to budge. All I could see from the entry was the blinking of yellow eyes. “Come on out!” I shouted. I waited another several moments before stepping into the cave. I saw no eyes now; instead, I heard a sawing roar. In the dark cave I could see nothing, yet the snoring—for this is what it was—could have brought me to the lion’s mouth, yet I refused to attack a sleeping enemy. So loud was his snoring the lion could not have heard my challenge had I shouted in his ears. I retreated and walked down the hill until I found a dwelling.

An old woman was sitting outside a low, tumble-down shack. She was on a stool, by a fire, cooking a stew in a pot.

“Good afternoon, granny,” I said.

“To them’s that don’t live ’round here, I’ll wager it’s a fine enough day,” she said. She looked at me and nodded. “But have a sit-down, sonny, and tell me wheres you’re headed.”

“I mean to return to the den where the lion sleeps and rouse him to a fight,” I said.

“I hadn’t taken you for a fool,” said the old woman. “I guesses now I could be just as wrong as anybody else.”

“Before morning, with your help, the lion will be dead.”

“What?” cackled the old woman. “Are you going to feed him my carcass and hope he chokes on my brittle old bones?” She laughed at this so much she began to cough, and I had to gently pat her on the back. “Thankee, sonny,” she said.

“Just a touch of your fire is all I ask, granny. I mean to smoke the monster out of his cave, so I may have the chance to stab him with my spear.”

She suddenly became grim. “Young man, I like you.” She struck me on the arm and said, “If I was young, I’d flirt with you. So let me tell you this, you are a fool.”

“Is it your habit to call bravery foolishness?” I asked.

“No, I calls foolishness foolishness. It is as it does, don’t you know? Didn’t no one never tell you that lion has skin that nothing can’t get through? Arrows, stones, knives, spears, sticks—they’ve all been tried. The lion no more cares for such pricks than a man like you minds a mosquito bite—less even! ‘Cause a skeeter will draw your blood, but no arrows of yours will show you the red of that beast’s blood. I tells you this ’cause I seen my own husband and sons try to destroy the creature that’s destroyed this land. I’m an old woman, with nothing to eat but thistles seasoned with the salt of my tears, but I wouldn’t like to see you go and get eated up by that demon lion.”

What spirited young man has ever heeded the wise words of his elders? No, her words inflamed me to avenge the deaths of her husband and children, to see if my weapons would succeed where others had failed.

I borrowed a smoky piece of charred wood from her fire, bade her farewell, and told her that I would stop by on my way back to Tiryns and bring her something good to eat. She wept tears into her pot of stew, then shouted after me again about my foolishness.

In the twilight I called to the beast to come out and face me, but there was no reply, only that terrible snoring. So I chopped down a tree and with a knife fashioned what became my favorite weapon, a hearty, simple, knotted club.

Then I made a fire, piling on green branches after it began to dance with high flames, and fanned the smoke into the cave. The snoring died down, replaced by a thunderous coughing. Spear ready, I awaited the lion’s attack. I have never quaked in my sandals, but in recollection I can hardly comprehend why I did not do so at this moment. The lion was furious, his eyes flashing, his mouth wide, roaring for my flesh. He was twice, no, thrice the size of the previous lion I had defeated. I planted my feet and launched the spear with all my strength.

Try this: take a pine needle, green and sharp or even brown and stiff, and drop it on a stone. Does the stone crumble, does the needle so much as stick in the surface? It was just so when my spear met the chest of that lion. I began to fear that what the old woman had said was true, that the hide of the beast was impenetrable. Nevertheless, there over my shoulder hung my quiver of arrows, and instantly I let loose one arrow after another, the lion not even troubling to brush them away. I hurled my new club at him; it bounced away. Finally he rushed at me and made a leap. I ducked under him, falling to my back and grasped hold of his chest. He landed roughly upon me: my life was certainly at its end!

I reached up through his curly mane and pressed my thumbs into his throat. My fingers on each hand were desperate to meet each other. I tightened my grip as I lifted myself to my feet. Again, as with the previous lion, I managed to press his head down against my chest, my chin bearing down on his crown. My hands lost hold of his massive throat and slipped till they caught hold behind his back. I grasped my hands together and pulled him into a fatal embrace—how many minutes was it before I cracked his back in two!

It was night by this time. I dropped beside the conquered beast and slept until morning.

It was rosy-fingered Dawn that woke me. I remembered my promise to the old woman and quickly collected my arrows and spear, all of whose tips were blunted by the lion’s thick hide, and retrieved my sturdy club, not much the worse for wear. I was thinking I would chase down a rabbit or two. I prayed to Lord Zeus, giving him thanks for the strength and courage with which he had blessed me.

I grasped my hands together and pulled the Nemean lion into a fatal embrace.

Then, as if to spare me further trouble, Zeus blessed me with the sight of a sheep lying in the dark cave. Its neck was broken, undoubtedly by a quick blow from the Nemean lion the night before; otherwise, however, it was untouched.

I picked up this sheep and flung her over one shoulder, while over the other I towed by its tail the immense, weighty carcass of the lion. I marched across the countryside with my prizes, and in honor of my success composed a little song:

Has there been a finer hero on the loose
Whose father was the god we call great Zeus?
Greater than Hercules?
Fall on your knees!
For my name is Hercules, defeater of the Nemean lion,
I’m hungry as an ox or sheep—which I’ll soon be fryin’.

Linus, had he lived, would have mocked me, and god Apollo, patron of the arts, must have laughed at my silly song; but I could not resist singing in my own honor, so full of pride was I.

From a long distance, out of my hearing anyway, the old woman took notice of my approach. Though she was none too spry, she began dancing with hops and leaps around her little fire. The first words I heard were: “You foolish boy!” But she was smiling and clearly overjoyed, for she saw me dragging not only the lion but the sheep.

When I arrived at her fire, she hopped up to me and touched my cheeks with her old hands, laughed, and said, “The gods must be in your corner, sonny-boy, I tells you that.”

When I was about to skin and prepare the lamb for cooking, she said, “Oh, you let me take cares of the cookin’. In the meantime, you get down off your big feets and tell me the story of that there lion.”

“That I will, granny.” And so I told her what I have told you, only I was distracted as I spoke, for an idea, like fine mist, was falling upon me. “Granny,” I said, “why should I drag this lion all the way to Tiryns?”

“Why should you?” she answered. “’Cause if you don’t, no one’ll take your word you killed him. There’s gots to be proof, Herky.”

“Wouldn’t the skin be proof enough?”

“’Course it would . . . if you had something that’d cut that tough hide—which, I gotta reminds you, you don’t have.”

“But perhaps I do,” I answered.

While the old woman quoted her own words at me, about how neither metal, nor wood, nor stone could penetrate the lion’s hide, I knelt beside the carcass and lifted one of its paws. Had I a sword or knife as sharp as this lion’s claws, no man would have ever dared to challenge me to fight. I grasped one digit of that massive claw, and poked it at the lion’s chest. There was a cut! In no time, I skinned the lion using his own claws.

The old woman came from a family of tanners, and she helped me prepare the lion skin so that I would be able to wear it as a robe. We stretched it on pegs, drying it in the hot sun, and scraping it clean in front and back. The skinless carcass we left in a pit a good distance away, and day after day the birds of prey flew from miles and lands away to pick at it until there was nothing left but bones.

A sweeter companion I have never known than the old woman, Trisia, and we spent a good month or two in conversation. My only duty was to fetch her fish and game, which she cooked each day while I told her my stories and she told me hers.

There I stood, in my great height and massive brawn, my big face peering out through the jaws of the lion.

When, finally, the lion skin was ready to wear, I put it on one morning, nearly scaring poor Trisia out of her wits.

There I stood, in my great height and massive brawn, my big face peering out through my new helmet, the jaws of the lion; the forepaws tied at my chest, the back legs falling at my sides and the tail almost trailing on the ground.

“Oh, lordy!” Trisia exclaimed. “I thought for a moment the lion skin had come back to life and grabbed you and eated you up!” Then, with tears in her eyes, she bade me a fond farewell.

Was Eurystheus pleased to see me? Perhaps I should have warned him of my return. Seeing a man wrapped in a cloak of lion skin, he leaped out of his throne and into a large jar.

“Guards!” he shouted. “Oh, guards! The lion I sent Hercules to kill has killed and eaten him!”

I stood, arms folded, peering out at him from between the jaws of the Nemean lion. “As you bid, king, I have done,” I said.

The guards had not dared to approach me, though none of them were silly enough to take me for the lion. They saw me and knew me as the hero Hercules.

Eurystheus got up the courage to take a long look at me from the lip of the jar. Then he climbed out, brushed the dust from his knees and elbows and reseated himself on the throne. “I knew it was you all along, Hercules. But I had been napping, and I was confused, thinking I saw a live lion.”

“The Nemean lion is dead, and I wear his skin as my trophy,” I declared.

“Yes,” said Eurystheus, “though it’s not at all becoming on you. That labor must have been easier than I imagined. In fact, I should have done it myself. But this next one, I promise, won’t be so easy! I command you, you brute, to do away with the most horrible monster that has ever plagued mankind, the hydra of Lerna, that famous nine-headed snake monster!”

I thought Eurystheus “the most horrible monster that has ever plagued mankind,” but I said nothing, only nodded and left the palace.